Tone Poem: Stella
by chrysalis escapist
Summary: a series of Stella's dreams or rather nightmares, set between ep.s "Heart of glass" and "The ride-in"
1. Broken Diamonds

**Disclaimer: all the characters still belong to Anthony E. Zuiker and the crew**

**A/N: ****"Tone Poem" is a song by Toyah, it's about dreams and I love to listen to it when I can't sleep because I'm upset, I find it very soothing. The titles of the chapters are also songs by Toyah.**

There's water, glass and blood everywhere. She tries to get up and away but she's sinking in. There's no ground beneath her feet. She tries to hold on to something but there's just glass cutting into her hands. It starts to rain. Razorblade-sharp raindrops are cutting into her. She looks at her arms, she can't see the wounds, but she can feel them. She knows there should be blood, but she can't see any. The water around her is red and turbid. Red ripples dance across the surface and she feels like they are ripping little pieces out of her and are scattering her being all across the body of water. Raindrops are bouncing back from the surface, little red pearls falling down again and disappearing in the mass of others. She tries to swim but the glass makes the water thick as snow. The slush slows her movements. It's so cold. The glass is ice, razorblade-sharp crystals of ice entering her through all those invisible cuts. Blood flowing out, ice flowing in, slowly, curdled. Clotting, freezing to the inside of her blood vessels, being pushed away by others cutting her inside out. The ripples interfere, building up on each other, growing into blood-streaked faces. Waves and waves of faces wash over her, hands push and pull her asunder. Faces blur, nobody sees her tears, nobody sees her. She tries to wipe away the tears but they have frozen to her skin. The water freezes under her touch. She's so cold. She stops shivering, lies still, dead still, dead. She's standing in the midst of all those people, people with annoyed faces, annoyed because she's in the way, because she's breaking their pace. "No, no! Please, don't!" she screams as people in maneuvering around her body step right through her soul.


	2. Victims of the riddle: Vivisection

**Thanks, Tigerkat51, I hope you like this part, too.**

She walks through the hallway. It seems to stretch before her. _Haven't I come past that door just a moment ago? _She shakes her head. Some days are just too long. She swears she just saw a picture move along the wall. She focuses on the picture, it follows her steps. She stops, the picture doesn't. It keeps moving, now ahead of her, and is followed by that same door. _Okay, I think that door wants to tell me something._ She decides to open it. It leads into one of the trace-labs. She goes in; several pieces of evidence are cluttering the tables. She makes a mental note to ask the techs to clean up after themselves. Somewhere in a corner something is making sounds like a stuck insect. She moves closer to the origin of the sounds, one of the brown paper evidence-bags. She lifts it up, the Swiss-army-knife underneath starts spinning across the table and falls off. It shakes itself, then it folds out a knife on either side and flies off, bumping into Stella's shoe. It's out of balance for a moment but soon gains height – and somehow it looks angry. Stella backs off; the Swiss-army-insect follows her. Stella turns around and heads for the door, in a moment the thing is in front of her – now it also sounds angry. Stella backs off again, hits a wall, tries to move along the wall, the thing stays right in front of her. It folds out a two-barrel rifle and fires. She sees the bullets come towards her like the tongue of a snake. She ducks, the split tongue follows her. It almost touches her nose right between her eyes. It hesitates, flutters, sniffing her. "Ugh! You're … keep away from me … you won't infect me!" The tongue coils back into the barrels. The wall Stella is leaning on gives way with a similar sound of disgust. She falls back but doesn't hit the ground, that's gone, too. She just falls.

She lands on a floor that apparently hasn't heard yet that she's contaminated. She looks around. _The morgue, how fitting!_ She hears Sid inside. The door opens, she walks in. Hawkes is lying on one of the dissecting tables. Sid is bent over him. There is the sound of a bone-saw. "Oh my God!" she's at their side, "Hawkes! What happened to him?" She stares at his open chest. Hawkes turns to her: "What happened to me? Come on, Stella, you know that. You brought it in here!" – "Yeah, and now we are all infected," Sid adds. She sees that the skin has been pulled away from his forehead down to his chin. One eye is pulled from the socket. She can see the blood vessels attached to it, she can see the muscles of his cheeks and lips move as he speaks. Hawkes sits up, holding his skin away like an exhibitionist his coat. She sees his heart beat and his lungs expand as he breathes. The sound of the bone-saw comes closer. Stella turns on her heels and runs, out of the morgue, down the hallway. The walls stretch again, the exit moves away from her. Suddenly it snaps back and the door hits her in the face.

She wakes up on some couch, looks around for orientation. She's still in the CSI-building. She gets up slowly, feeling very exhausted. Her feet hurt; carefully she puts one foot in front of the other, making her way down another hallway. The walls don't move, pictures stay in their places. She looks around again, opens a door randomly. She turns the lights on; everything is in its place, no funny sounds. She's about to turn away when she sees a hand under one of the tables. She moves closer, recognizes Mac. He's on his back, his eyes are closed. "Mac?" He doesn't move, she reaches out, touches his skin, it feels cold. _Oh God!_ She feels for his pulse, watches his chest for movement. "Mac! Oh my God, please, no!" She tries to revive him, but she knows it's too late. "Please, please don't leave me. I need you!" She grabs him by the shoulders, shakes him, she knows it's futile. She breaks down on his chest, crying. She comes up again, touches his face, gently runs her fingers along his temples. He opens his eyes, they are bloodshot. She gasps, he turns his eyes on her, they are glowing red with anger. Like laser swords they cut through her. "Let me see if you have a heart," he says, dissecting her.


	3. Space between the sounds

She looks at the building that contains their latest crime-scene. Something strikes her as familiar; she can't tell what it is. She goes in, heads for the elevator, the scene is on the roof – ten stories up. She sees a sign on the elevator: out of order. With a sigh she turns for the stairs and starts walking up. Step after step after step, she's pleasantly surprised it seems so easy although her head hurts. She comes to the ninth floor, sees Flack talking to people who might have heard something. He doesn't hear her greeting. She climbs the last few steps and makes her way out onto the roof. The sun seems so much brighter up here. Her headache becomes worse. Mac is kneeling alongside the dead body, examining it carefully. Stella approaches him and looks at the body. Suddenly she feels torn apart, she has to turn away. _Why can't I look at her? _"Cause of death seems fairly obvious: she was beheaded," she hears Mac say, "Question is, who was she? And where is the head?" Stella forces herself to turn around again but still can't bear to look at the body. It feels like her soul is being pulled out of her. She decides to look at Mac instead. He's on his cell, "Come on, where are you?" he says to it as nobody answers his call. When he removes it from his ear Stella sees the number he has dialed – her cell! She wonders why she hasn't heard it ring, then, a moment later, why Mac still hasn't realized that she is here. She feels her soul twist again. Her cell drops from her hand. She can't hear it hit the ground – it seems to vanish in the air. She touches Mac's shoulder, he doesn't turn, only brushes her touch away as he would an insect. He gets up and moves away, leaving her with a full view of the body. She jumps back, finds herself on the edge of the roof. _Is this why this place looks so familiar, because I died here? _Mac is right beside her. _Does he feel me? _"Hey guys, I think I found the head," he calls out. Stella looks down, sees something bloody on a windowsill below. Somebody fetches it, brings it up to Mac. "Oh," is all Mac says when he sees the blood-streaked curls around the familiar face. "Well then, case closed," he continues after some thinking. "What happened?" the other person asks. "It was an accident. It was her fault, she should have been more careful." Stella feels she's being pulled away. _No, please, don't let go. Mac, please hold me!_ For the first time Mac looks in her direction "Why?" he asks. _I don't know why I let this happen, _she screams in her mind. "No, I mean: why were you alone?"


End file.
